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It wasn’t a carbon copy of Saturday night’s loss in Chicago, but there were definitely many similarities to that game in Toronto’s 93-84 loss to the Hawks on Monday afternoon.

Hang around for most of the contest? Check.

Fail to get to the free-throw line for long stretches and then don’t hit enough of the freebies when you do get there? Sure.

Most importantly, the Raptors again missed a host of makeable shots and committed some bad turnovers to start the fourth, which resulted in another notch in the loss column.

Head coach Dwane Casey even said post-game that he feels like a broken record.

“I thought our guys competed and played hard. We are missing a few of our key players, but our other guys came in and did a good job,” he said, sounding an awful lot like he did on Saturday night.

“Our zone was effective and we did a good job at reading and recognizing and forcing them into jump shots.”

The problem was, the Hawks — particularly Joe Johnson and Josh Smith — are good, and hit the bulk of their shots (a combined 22-39).

“They made their tough shots and we missed ours,” Casey said.

Smith, a potential all-star, was unguardable in a 28-point, 15-rebound effort. Perennial all-star Johnson added 27 points, six assists and five rebounds along with some good defence on DeMar DeRozan, who shot just 5-for-17.

“We go through droughts where we miss shots,” Casey said. “We have to recognize how to handle those situations.”

Leandro Barbosa led the Raptors with 22 off of the bench, Jose Calderon added 13 points and 11 assists for the slumping Raptors, losers of seven of the eight games played over the past 11 days.

Without Andrea Bargnani (strained calf) again along with three others including valuable reserve James Johnson (ankle sprain), Toronto battled hard against another good team (Atlanta is now 10-4), but could never quite get over the hump, largely thanks to Smith, who continues to sizzle.

The Raptors trailed by only a bucket entering the final quarter thanks the team’s best shooting in quite some time (51.4% at the break, 47.1% after three following games of 34.9% and 37.5% shooting). However, a 6-for-24 performance in the fourth made any thoughts of a comeback moot.